One of the most common eye disorders, dry eye disease, causes irritation or discomfort, and can decrease functional vision, sometimes causing a dramatic deterioration in the quality of life. About five million Americans over age 50 suffer from moderate-to-severe dry eyes, and tens of millions more have mild or episodic manifestations of the disease, at a cost of more than $50 billion.

In terms of treatment, there are several drops and drugs that can help. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on things like artificial tears, but currently there is no therapy available to actually fix the problem. If drugs don't work, doctors can try plugging up the outflow tear ducts, but that can cause complications, such as plugs migrating and eroding into the face, requiring surgical removal. Alternatively, surgeons can just cauterize or stitch up the ducts in the first place.

There has to be a better way.

What about prevention? Dry eyes can be caused by LASIK surgery, affecting about 20-40% of patients six months after the operation. With a million LASIK procedures performed annually, that's a lot of people, and sometimes the long-term symptoms can be severe and disabling.

There's a long list of drugs that can cause it, including antihistamines, decongestants, nearly all the antidepressants, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, anti-Parkinson's drugs, beta-blockers, and hormone replacement therapy, as well as a few herbal preparations.

In the developing world, vitamin A deficiency can start out as dry eyes and then progress to becoming the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness. Vitamin A deficiency is almost never seen in the developed world, unless you do it intentionally. There was a report in the 1960s of a guy who deliberately ate a vitamin A-deficient diet, living off of bread and lime juice for five years, and his eyes developed vascularization and ulceration of the cornea, which you can see (if you dare) in my Treating Dry Eye Disease with Diet: Just Add Water?video.That was better than what happened to an unfortunate woman who was the member of a cult and tried to live off of brown rice and herbal tea: Her eyes literally melted and collapsed.

There are also a couple case reports of autistic children who refused to eat anything but French fries or menus exclusively comprised of bacon, blueberry muffins, and Kool-Aid, and became vitamin A deficient. A case in the Bronx was written up as vegan diet and vitamin A deficiency, but it had nothing to do with his vegan diet--the kid refused to eat vegetables, consuming only potato chips, puffed rice cereal with non-fortified soymilk, and juice drinks. "His parents lacked particular skill in overcoming the child's tendency to avoid fruits and vegetables."

A plant-based diet may actually be the best thing for patients with dry eye disease, those who wear contact lenses, and those who wish to maximize their tear secretions. People with dry eyes should be advised to lower protein, total fat, and cholesterol intake, and do the following:

We know dehydration can cause a dry mouth, but could dehydration cause dry eyes? It may seem kind of obvious, but evidently it was never studied until recently. Is the answer to just drink more water? We know that those suffering from dry eye are comparatively dehydrated, so researchers figured that tear secretion decreases with progressive dehydration just like saliva secretion decreases and gives us a dry mouth. And indeed, as one gets more and more dehydrated, their urine concentrates and so does the tear fluid. But one can reverse that with rehydration, raising the exciting prospect that improving whole-body hydration by getting people to drink more water might bring relief for those with dry eyes. The researchers recommend eight cups of water a day for women and ten cups a day for men.

One of the most common eye disorders, dry eye disease, causes irritation or discomfort, and can decrease functional vision, sometimes causing a dramatic deterioration in the quality of life. About five million Americans over age 50 suffer from moderate-to-severe dry eyes, and tens of millions more have mild or episodic manifestations of the disease, at a cost of more than $50 billion.

In terms of treatment, there are several drops and drugs that can help. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on things like artificial tears, but currently there is no therapy available to actually fix the problem. If drugs don't work, doctors can try plugging up the outflow tear ducts, but that can cause complications, such as plugs migrating and eroding into the face, requiring surgical removal. Alternatively, surgeons can just cauterize or stitch up the ducts in the first place.

There has to be a better way.

What about prevention? Dry eyes can be caused by LASIK surgery, affecting about 20-40% of patients six months after the operation. With a million LASIK procedures performed annually, that's a lot of people, and sometimes the long-term symptoms can be severe and disabling.

There's a long list of drugs that can cause it, including antihistamines, decongestants, nearly all the antidepressants, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, anti-Parkinson's drugs, beta-blockers, and hormone replacement therapy, as well as a few herbal preparations.

In the developing world, vitamin A deficiency can start out as dry eyes and then progress to becoming the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness. Vitamin A deficiency is almost never seen in the developed world, unless you do it intentionally. There was a report in the 1960s of a guy who deliberately ate a vitamin A-deficient diet, living off of bread and lime juice for five years, and his eyes developed vascularization and ulceration of the cornea, which you can see (if you dare) in my Treating Dry Eye Disease with Diet: Just Add Water?video.That was better than what happened to an unfortunate woman who was the member of a cult and tried to live off of brown rice and herbal tea: Her eyes literally melted and collapsed.

There are also a couple case reports of autistic children who refused to eat anything but French fries or menus exclusively comprised of bacon, blueberry muffins, and Kool-Aid, and became vitamin A deficient. A case in the Bronx was written up as vegan diet and vitamin A deficiency, but it had nothing to do with his vegan diet--the kid refused to eat vegetables, consuming only potato chips, puffed rice cereal with non-fortified soymilk, and juice drinks. "His parents lacked particular skill in overcoming the child's tendency to avoid fruits and vegetables."

A plant-based diet may actually be the best thing for patients with dry eye disease, those who wear contact lenses, and those who wish to maximize their tear secretions. People with dry eyes should be advised to lower protein, total fat, and cholesterol intake, and do the following:

We know dehydration can cause a dry mouth, but could dehydration cause dry eyes? It may seem kind of obvious, but evidently it was never studied until recently. Is the answer to just drink more water? We know that those suffering from dry eye are comparatively dehydrated, so researchers figured that tear secretion decreases with progressive dehydration just like saliva secretion decreases and gives us a dry mouth. And indeed, as one gets more and more dehydrated, their urine concentrates and so does the tear fluid. But one can reverse that with rehydration, raising the exciting prospect that improving whole-body hydration by getting people to drink more water might bring relief for those with dry eyes. The researchers recommend eight cups of water a day for women and ten cups a day for men.

Beans are an essential part of any healthful diet. The federal government recommends about half a cup a day of beans, counting them as both a protein and a vegetable since they have the best of both worlds. Beans are excellent sources of fiber, folate, plant protein, plant iron, vitamin B1, and minerals such as magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and copper, all while being naturally low in sodium.

Yet Americans don't know beans! 96% of Americans don't even meet the measly minimum recommended intake of beans, chickpeas, split peas or lentils. The same percentage of Americans don't eat their greens every day. Two of the healthiest foods on the planet are greens and beans, but hardly anyone even consumes the minimum recommended amount. As a team of researchers from the National Cancer Institute noted, this is just another "piece added to the rather disturbing picture that is emerging of a nation's diet in crisis."

But how should we get our beans? Canned beans are convenient, but are they as nutritious as home-cooked? And if we do used canned, should we drain them or not? A recent study published in Food and Nutrition Sciences spilled the beans.

In addition to their health benefits, beans are cheap. The researchers did a little bean counting, and a serving of beans costs between ten cents and, if we want to go crazy, 40 cents.

The researchers compiled a table, which you can see in my video, Canned Beans or Cooked Beans?, of the cost per serving of beans, both canned and cooked. Canned beans cost about three times more than dried beans, but dried beans can take hours to cook, so my family splurges on canned beans, paying the extra 20 cents a serving. Nutrition-wise, cooked and canned are about the same, but the sodium content of canned beans can be 100 times that of cooked. Draining and rinsing the canned beans can get rid of about half the sodium, but you're also draining and rinsing away some of the nutrition. I recommend, when buying canned beans, to instead get the no-salt added varieties, and to keep and use the bean juice.

The bottom line is that beans, regardless of type or form, are a nutrient rich food and should be encouraged as part of an overall healthy diet.

We know that vegetarians tend to be slimmer, but there's a perception that veg diets may somehow be deficient in nutrients. So how's this for a simple study, profiled in my video Nutrient-Dense Approach to Weight Management: an analysis of the diets of 13,000 people, comparing the nutrient intake of those eating meat to those eating meat-free.

They found that those eating vegetarian were getting higher intakes of nearly every nutrient: more fiber, more vitamin A, more vitamin C, more vitamin E, more of the B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, & folate), more calcium, more magnesium, more iron, and more potassium. At the same time, they were also eating less of the harmful stuff like saturated fat and cholesterol. And yes, they got enough protein.

And some of those nutrients are the ones Americans really struggle to get enough of--like fiber, vitamins A, C, and E, calcium, magnesium, potassium--and those eating vegetarian got more of all of them. Even so, just because they did better than the standard American diet isn't saying much--they still didn't get as much as they should have. Those eating vegetarian ate significantly more dark green leafy vegetables, but that comes out to just two more teaspoons of greens than meat eaters on average every day.

In terms of weight management, the vegetarians were consuming, on average, 363 fewer calories every day. That's what people do when they go on a diet and restrict their food intake--but it seemed like that is how vegetarians just ate normally.

How sustainable are more plant-based diets long term? They are among the only type of diet that has been shown to be sustainable long-term, perhaps because not only do people lose weight but they often feel so much better.

And there's no calorie counting or portion control. In fact, vegetarians may burn more calories in their sleep. Those eating more plant-based diets appear to have an 11% higher resting metabolic rate. Both vegetarians and vegans seem to have a naturally revved up metabolism compared to those eating meat.

Having said that, the vegetarians in the first study mentioned were also eating eggs and dairy, so while they were significantly slimmer than those eating meat, they were still, on average, overweight. As profiled in my video, Thousands of Vegans Studied, the only dietary pattern associated on average with an ideal body weight was a strictly plant-based one. But at least the study helps to dispel the myth that meat-free diets are somehow nutrient-deficient. In fact, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Dietetic Associationasked, "What could be more nutrient dense than a vegetarian diet?"

Anyone can lose weight in the short term on nearly any diet, but diets don't seem to work in the long-term. That's because we don't need a "diet"; we need a new way of eating that we can comfortably stick with throughout our lives. If that's the case, then we better choose to eat in a way that will most healthfully sustain us. That's why a plant-based diet may offer the best of both worlds. It's the only diet, for example, shown to reverse heart disease-our number one killer-in the majority of patients, as described in my video: One in a Thousand: Ending the Heart Disease Epidemic.

There are a number of theories offered as to why those eating plant-based are, on average, so much slimmer. Check out these videos for more information:

In my video Alkaline Diets, Animal Protein, and Calcium Loss I presented evidence challenging the notion that our body is buffering the acid formed from our diet with calcium from our bones. How then is our body neutralizing the acid? Maybe with our muscles! Our blood gets more acidic as we age and our kidney function declines, and this may be a reason we lose muscle mass as we get older. As a pair of researchers note: "The modern Western diet based on animal products generates an acid load that may cause a lifespan state of unnoticed and growing metabolic acidosis." This chronic low-level diet-dependent metabolic acidosis might contribute to the progressive shrinking of our muscle mass as we age.

Muscle wasting appears to be an adaptive response to acidosis. When our muscles break down, amino acids are released into the bloodstream. Our liver can then take these amino acids and make something called glutamine, which our kidneys can use to get rid of excess acid. And indeed, in a three year study I profile in my video, Testing Your Diet with Pee and Purple Cabbage, those over age 65 eating alkaline diets were better able to preserve their muscle mass, which the researchers think may be because the alkaline-producing fruits and vegetables helped relieve the mild acidosis that occurs with the ingestion of the standard American diet.

So what should we think about the latest review's question, "Does an alkaline diet benefit health?" If the question is "Does a diet low in meat, eggs, and dairy--all acid-producing--and high in fruits and vegetables with lots of dark green leafies benefit health?" then of course the answer is yes, an alkaline diet benefits health. But if the question is "Does it matter what our 'peeH' is (whether our urine is acid or alkaline) regardless of what actually goes into our mouth?" then the answer is... still yes, but the accepted benefits of having alkaline urine appear limited to two areas: lower risk of kidney stones and better uric acid clearance.

We've known about kidney stones and alkalinity for a while, but the uric acid data is new. Researchers have found that alkalization of the urine is effective for removing uric acid from the body. If you remember from my video Flesh and Fructose, uric acid is bad stuff (potentially increasing one's risk of fatal stroke, heart disease, and death), so clearing more from your system is a good thing.

Those eating plant-based diets appear then to have an advantage in this regard. The average vegetarian diet is alkaline producing, and the average meat-eating diet is acid producing. Even though there are some acid-forming meat-substitutes, like some of the Quorn products, they're not as bad as something like tuna, and they're typically consumed in smaller quantities than meat consumers consume meat. Since the protein in plants is usually accompanied by much more potassium (which is alkalinizing), there is good reason to try to meet protein needs from plant sources. And when researchers actually measure urine pH, those eating strictly plant-based diets have the greatest advantage, with significantly more alkaline urine than omnivores.

How can we tell what our urine pH is? Well we can be all boring and order some pH paper strips to pee on. Or... we can use what everyone should have right now in their crisper, a purple cabbage. Everyone should have a red or purple cabbage in their fridge since it is not only one of the single best nutrition bangs for our buck, but we can also do science with it!

First, either boil some purple cabbage until the water turns deep purple or (a quicker and safer way since there's no hot liquids) blend some raw with water in a blender and strain out the solids. Then what you can do with that royal purple liquid is pour it in the toilet bowl after you urinate. (You can imagine how much fun kids have with this!)

If it stays purple, your urine is acidic and you should eat more dark green leafy vegetables. If the toilet bowl turns pink, your urine is really acidic, so you should definitely eat more dark green leafy vegetables. We're looking for blue. If it turns blue that means your urine is neutral or even basic. If it's sky blue, you should... continue to eat more dark green leafy vegetables. Now I have a low-flow toilet, so there's very little water in the bowel to start with. The effect might not be as dramatic if diluted in a larger quantity of water. For a step-by-step tutorial, see my video Testing Your Diet with Pee & Purple Cabbage.